Paint rollers, to a large extent, have replaced paint brushes for fast application of paint to interior or exterior building walls or the like. The paint roller is normally hand-held and includes a handle from which a bent wire extends of a length sufficient to hold a cylindrical felt or other soft, absorbant material cylinder with the cylinder mounted for rotation about its axis on a portion of the wire functioning as an axle for the roller. The roller is normally partially dipped within a mass of paint, conventionally maintained within an upwardly open, oblique bottom surface tray. The paint is manually applied to the periphery of the roller by physically rolling the roller along the inclined bottom wall of the paint tray, sufficient to coat the roller periphery. Upon partial immersion of the cylinder of the paint roller, usually an excessive amount of paint is applied to the roller periphery, resulting in dripping of the paint on the surface after paint application, i.e., paint running. Further, in moving the roller after immersion from the tray to an area of the wall, ceiling, floor, etc. being painted, some of the paint often drips from the roller during such transport.
Attempts have been made to eliminate the tray and to provide a more effective means for application of the paint to the rotating soft material cylinder or roller of the painting implement. In the commercial painting field, pumps or the like have been employed for pumping paint from a container or storage area to the paint roller cylinder. Both manually driven and motor driven paint roller coating apparatus have evolved due to the need for controlled paint flow to the periphery of the paint roller cylinder. The following U.S. patents are directed to attempts at solving the problem at hand: U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,135,000, 3,409,831, 3,648,322, 3,493,988, 4,107,815, 4,164,803 and 4,233,705.
While such apparatus have met with some success in supplying an even but light coating of paint to the periphery of porous material the soft cylinder mounted to the wire frame of the paint roller, the apparatus has failed to be light weight, portable, and readily movable across its floor while loaded from spot to spot within a room being painted. At the same time, the known apparatus fails to insure even coating of the soft material cylinder of the paint roller quickly and efficiently and without self application by the painter.
It is therefore an object of the invention to provide a compact, portable, easily assembled and disassembled, motor-driven paint roller loader which fully obviates the problems discussed above.